


Waiting for the Conquered

by rmc28



Category: Aliens (1986)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 03:25:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rmc28/pseuds/rmc28
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The queen's view of events.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting for the Conquered

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dynamicsymmetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/gifts).



The queen waits, watching over her domain. The incubator-creatures are all secured by her soldiers nearby. A few inseminators are loose, as well as the two trapped inside the strange buildings of the creatures, and she is working on a suitable supply of eggs. A few soldiers are still trying to catch the last creature, that remarkable young female. That they are failing only reinforces the creature's suitability for being the next queen-carrier of the People.

There will be more creatures coming. The queen learned, growing inside her own incubator, that the creatures come from another world. Their communication is sadly limited compared to the People, but she gathered hazy visions of a vast fertile homeworld, rich in food and resources. The creatures travel in ships through the cold space between worlds, like the People did once. They must have some intelligence, even if they cannot speak properly. They are weak and disorganised and they have no proper ruler.

There will be a proper ruler, when the People take the new ships that are coming, take them to that lush, rich homeworld. The queen will rule there, with her queen-daughters and all their beautiful children. They will conquer and then they will farm the vast herds of stupid rulerless creatures, and they will rule forever.

She hisses contentedly at the thought. The latest egg slides pleasingly out of her ovipositer, and she starts another growing. There is not much else to do while she waits.

 

*****

 

She is alerted by the sound of the ship falling through atmosphere, by the chaotic mind-noise of the creatures within it, and she readies her soldiers to spring the planned trap.

These creatures are harder to conquer than the ones she first defeated. Some of them escape, barricade themselves where her soldiers cannot reach, where the young female is. She wants that young female, she wants her daughters to partake of such skill and ingenuity that can evade the People for a while. It will only be a while, but so few prey ever manage even that.

 

*****

 

The queen watches the creatures through her trapped inseminators. They are so disorded and confusing and frustratingly hard to understand, but she slowly learns. The young female has joined the new arrivals, and is being mothered by an older female. _That_ one draws the queen's attention, her thoughts slippery and difficult as all these creatures, and yet the People are constantly within them. There is a fierceness unmatched by any creature the queen has yet touched. This female may make a good liaison; but if not she will certainly be another good queen-incubator. 

There is another liaison-potential, a male, weaker and easier to read. He too thinks constantly of the People; unlike the other and like the queen his thoughts are of war and conquest, and of taking the People back to his homeworld. He seems to think _he_ will rule _them_. A fool, but a useful one. She tries to reach into his alien mind, to show him how the inseminators can be used on the two females, and begin meeting their mutual goal. She is not sure he understands, until later that night her children are released and go hunting.

Meanwhile she keeps working, trying to extract from his tediously-limited thoughts how to get her soldiers into the creatures' refuge and how to get her People up onto the ship above. By the time her inseminator-children have failed, she knows what to do. The foolish creatures, divided among themselves and deaf to the People's communication, do not notice until it is nearly over. The queen revels in the capture at last of her young female, and does not bother to protect the male liaison-potential from her soldiers. He is too weak, and she prefers the older female anyway. She reaches out and summons her.

 

*****

 

The liaison-potential presents herself in the egg-chamber as expected, and yet her sense is still all fierce defiance, not the obedience implied by her arrival. The queen's confidence is further shaken when the creature releases _fire_ near the eggs; an infuriating, unexpected threat, hidden under the female's slippery thoughts. This female is far too dangerous for a liaison. It is a pity the male died. No matter, there will be other candidates when the People reach the creatures' homeworld.

The queen reluctantly allows the stealing back of her young female. Do the creatures really think they will escape? She will indulge this useless defiance if it keeps the fire off her eggs.

When the fire gusts out again, the queen is appalled, distracted by the painful heat through each burning egg case. It takes too long to get the pain under control, to detach herself from the useless deadweight of the ovipositor, to pursue vengeance on the vicious traitorous evil People-killing creature. The escape ship is lifting with the enemy on board, and there is no soldier nearer than herself. The queen folds herself into a closing door as the ship rises. 

Curled into the tiny space, protected from the vacuum, she plots how to revenge her People and still complete her conquest. She can replace the lost eggs on the journey to the homeworld once enough soldiers and incubators have been brought up to the ship. 

The vast explosion below rips through her intent planning, the violent death of so many of her children shocking her nearly mindless. Only as the escape ship comes to a halt aboard the much bigger ship does she stir her into cold, furious action. She rips apart the useless metal-and-plastic copy of a creature; she tries to seize her chosen daughter-incubator; she battles the terrible older female, soft body now encased in strong and painful metal; she is shocked into incomprehension when she loses the battle, as she has lost everything else to this creature.

The queen falls from the ship toward the planet below. The cold vacuum hurts her, but she knows the atmosphere will be all too warm soon enough. _She is going to die._ She reaches out desperately, trying to feel a soldier, an inseminator, an egg, _something_ left of all her children must have survived. **The People must survive.**

But she feels nothing above her on the ship, nothing below her in the blasted buildings of the creatures. She reaches towards the old crash site further away, trying to feel if the eggs that bred her have survived the blast. All she can feel is the burning of the atmosphere as she dies, falling in flames.


End file.
